


What Frenchmen can do well

by GwenChan



Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, English references, Explicit Sexual Content, F/M, First Time, Genderbend, Grooming, Modern Era, Nyotalia, Slow Build
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-20
Updated: 2016-05-29
Packaged: 2018-06-09 16:28:16
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6914653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GwenChan/pseuds/GwenChan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rose Kirkland is English down to her bone, resistant and romantic like the heroines from the Jane Austen novels, that  she adores. With hair always held in two long pigtails, she would love to live in XIX century England and, maybe, find her Darcy.<br/>Destiny, however, has other plans.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Pigtails and French braids

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Ciò che i francesi sanno fare bene](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6537502) by [GwenChan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GwenChan/pseuds/GwenChan). 



_Pigtails and French braids_

Rose was a plain girl. POD, the computer from “Kiss, marry, avoid”, would’ve been proud of her. The other 99.9% of make-over TV shows broadcasted by Real Time channel would’ve informed her on how putting one’s hair in  pigtails – or ponytails since they reached her buttocks – was totally out of fashion, especially if there were more than twenty candles on your birthday cake. Or at least this would be the case if Rose had ever watched one.

No, instead, she didn’t miss an episode of Father Brown or Miss Marple. They were the only occasion for which putting down the book she was reading – usually a Jane Austen novel – was worthy. She sometimes read the Bronte sisters, just to change a little. She had read Pride and Prejudice two hundred times, to the point of memorizing even the punctuation. Emma had eighty-eight readings, followed by Wuthering Heights with forty-two.

With due consideration, given the context and her passions, Rose had come to the conclusion she was placed in the wrong century.

She would’ve loved, instead, living in a Victorian-era London filtrated through rose colored glasses, like in certain classic novels. She would’ve killed to be invited to a ball like the one where Elizabeth met Darcy, faking reluctance behind a feathery fan. She fantasized about sunny afternoons spent drinking little cups of tea at candid tables, full of scones covered with jam and other pastries.

She let such dreams occupy her mind until an annoying honking sound, coming from the street below, came to remind her of the cold reality: a two-room flat covered in bland wallpaper whose stripes once were pink-and-white, in a smoggy neighbourhood in London. The calendar on the wall informed her in capital letters that the year was 2016. The same calendar reminded also reminded her of her appointment with the hairdresser in the afternoon. It was a pain in the butt, but it was also necessary if she wanted to prevent the extremities of her pigtails from looking like a used toothbrush. Rose was sure they wouldn’t be proper for a well-born lady - not that she was a well-born lady, although she strived to be one.

Anyway, split ends didn’t look good on anyone, no matter their position in life, and the biannual appointment to her usual hairdresser came just before the situation became a disaster.

***

Rose sat with crossed ankles – like a real lady – on one of the five leather seats in the hair salon. She knew exactly what her request would’ve been. Her thin hair, soaked with water, hung down her back like threads of lead; it was the only occasion when she let her hair down. Rose never abandoned her pigtails, not even for sleeping. From the age of two – when her hair had become long enough to be held – pigtails had become her signature style.

First day of school: pigtails

Diploma: pigtails

Graduation ceremony: pigtails

Wedding … She hadn’t had a wedding yet, but she was sure she would wear pigtails.

Sometimes she stopped to reflect, thinking that Elizabeth Bennet or Catherine Earnshaw would’ve never groomed their hair in such a childish fashion. As soon as the thought crossed her mind, however, she shook her head – and in turn causing her pigtails to swish – because she loved her trademark too much to renounce to it. If it was possible to wash hair without letting down her pigtails, she wouldn’t have thought twice about doing it.

“The usual,” she said when the hairdresser on duty approached. She didn’t bother to raise her eyes from “Sense and Sensibility” (read thirty-six times with a huge spot of Twining’s-branded tea on page 12).

“The usual”, meant to cut a little at the split ends -- three centimetres and not a millimetre more. She even carried a ruler in her purse. The last thing she expected was for her somebody to question her signature style.

“Are you sure?” the hairdresser on duty asked. Nobody in the salon had questioned her choice since the first time she sat on the very same seat. There were two possibilities: Either a mysterious force had transported her in an alternative universe – she peered out of the corner of her eye in case a man looking like Peter Capaldi holding a glowing screwdriver had appeared -- or in the time between now and her last haircut they had hired a new employee. Considering the disappointing absence of blue police box, the second hypothesis seemed, unfortunately, the most plausible.

She finally resolved in putting a hold to the predicaments of the Dashwood sisters’ to look in the eyes – meaning, in the reflection of the mirror – of the person who dared to question her taste.

“You would look lovely with layered hair.”

Rose’s eyes narrowed behind her glasses. “Three centimetres. The maximum I can allow. Blunt cut,” she replied coldly.

The new hairdresser had already lost several points in his favor. She was entertaining the idea of changing salons when the fatty owner of the shop approached. In one hand she held a large bottle that probably contained enough hairspray to enlarge the hole in the ozone layer; in the other she carried a pair of dangerously pointy scissors. The unmistakable smell of mothballs that came with her old-lady cardigan preceded her, but she was funny and knew all the juicy gossip. Rose once told her about how she embroidered bibs for baby Charlotte.

“Rose, I see you’ve already met our new acquaintance. Let me introduce Francis. Francis, Rose.”

“Enchanté.”

Wonderful, French. Now, Rose had nothing in particular against French people, a small dose of rivalry from being born on British soil aside. She didn’t even know any French people, although she suspected they weren’t like those who populated the pages of the manga “Lady Oscar”, lent to her by Sakura. Sakura was the Japanese girl at the ceramics laboratory. Such novels, and many romantic movies with perhaps a kiss under the Eiffel Tower included in the package, were her only frame of reference for how Frenchmen acted, and even then she was smart enough to know that their fictionalized personas were likely far from the reality.

“You sure have wonderful hair, mademoiselle...?”

“Kirkland. Rose Kirkland. A very good reason to leave it as it is.” Her used toothbrush extremities were quickly disposed of by Francis with a few expert snips of his scissors’.

The routine was simple: cut, plate, cheque, home. Rose didn’t imagine that the road from plate to cheque could have complications.

“Do you still want pigtails?”

She nodded. Her eyes had left the mirror in favor of the novel resting on her knees. Rose was not used to see herself with hair down to the point that the sight made her feel uncomfortable. There was a pause, then: “I know what would really look nice on you. No scissors.”

Rose peered at the Alice in Wonderland-themed watch on her left wrist and mentally calculated how much time she could afford. After a few seconds of contemplation, she turned to Francis. “I must be home for five o’clock tea. I cannot stay more than half an hour.” She chanced a glance at the mirror. With her wrinkled nose she almost looked like the White Rabbit.

“Five minutes will be enough,” Francis assured her. He was already holding the majority of her hair with a series of hairpins; he only let three tufts free, to start braiding.

Clearly, there was a reason it was called the _French_ braid. Rose wasn’t an expert, but she had the vague feeling that if there was a prize for best French braid, the one she wore right now would be the clear winner. Not a single strand of hair escaped from the tightly-woven braid. She looked... nice. She looked more like an adult, more like an Elizabeth Bennet and less like a Little Miss Muffet.

She lowered her eyes, embarrassed. That Rose scared her a little. She let Francis mouth the word “jolie” and wished she had a fan. She settled for hiding her face behind her book.

“I prefer pigtails,” she lied. “I mean, this is fine,” she clarified, standing up. She quickly paid for her haircut and walked out.

***

Maybe she should change hair salons, she reflected in the subway, her French braid a distant memory. Even if the owner was a pleasant lady who loved talking about George and Charlotte. Even if she was the only cheap hairdresser for miles around.

Even if they had an employee who could do the best French braid in the whole world. Especially if they had an employee who could do the best French braid in the whole world.

She opened her purse to put away her Oyster card in the only zipped pocket, behind her mobile. It took her few seconds to notice the stranger element. There were the keys, lip balm, receipt, cash, ruler and a piece of paper. Piece of paper?

Maybe she _should_ change hair salons, if one of the employee took advantage of one moment of distraction to slip her his phone number. She crumpled the note. Before she had time to properly dispose of it, her intentions were interrupted by a monotone voice announcing that her stop had arrived. Rose found herself passing through the turnstiles, pressed like a sardine on the escalators and again above the ground. There her reflexes were quick enough to easily dodge the flock of commuters of Thursday evening.

She sighed, hearing the Big Ben sound six. She absentmindedly put the crumbled note in her purse.

***

The following Thursday Rose was reflecting on what was more important--remaining faithful to herself or making a friend happy.

“I don’t wanna see you with those sad pigtails. No pigtails or I won't let you enter!”

On the phone Abigail had been adamant. Abigail, who she had met through their Wednesday painting course, was the California Girl archetype. Rose attended a lot of courses. There was ceramics on Thursday evening, sewing on Sunday morning, book club on Monday, at five pm. The book club was her favourite. It was the perfect combination of XIX century novels and cups of tea with milk.

Wednesday, however, was dedicated to brushes and colours. For some it was a treasured opportunity to learn to draw something above the skillset of an average kindergartener; for others it was just a way to kill time. Abigail belonged to the second category, considering she could barely draw a straight line. In many ways she was Rose’s exact opposite. Still, because Destiny is strange and Life always finds a way to surprise you (or damage you, depending on how you look at the situation) the two girls became good friends. Good enough, at least, for the American to invite her to a happy hour organized for a non-specified reason.

“It’s a fashionable place,” Abigail specified and Rose imagined her, phone stuck between her ear and shoulder, busily applying nail polish to her toes. Yes, Abigail was also the kind of person who wore sandals in February. Even if she didn’t like cold at all. Anyway, Rose could’ve still resisted her friend’s request if the girl, after having used a drill sergeant voice, hadn’t resorted to her pleading, kitten-like voice. And nobody could resist Abigail when she used her pleading, kitten-like voice. Rose included.

Rose looked at herself in the mirror. With a very slow movement, like the ribbons were two venomous snakes, she untied the pigtails. Her hair, due to gravity, fell immediately toward the ground, parting around her face like curtains. Heavy, dusty curtains.

Unsure, the girl put her hands inside the mass; she weighed it; she tried its consistency and held it closed fists. She studied it like she saw it for the first time.

With a cup of herbal tea to warm her hands, while her mobile kept buzzing for Abigail’s texts and the TV advertised the new season of Downton Abbey, Rose considered resorting to Plan B.  No, not calling Francis, that was plan C. Plan B consisted of pretending to be sick to skip Abigail’s party, complete with a phone call using a nasally voice and fake coughs galore. Then she remembered how the American had a habit of visiting everyone in the vast circle of her acquaintances that declared they were not feeling well. She then remembered that she was a terrible actress. Abigail would’ve exposed her faster than it took the Flash to run around the globe. Or something like that -- she wasn’t very familiar with those American superheroes.

Time for Plan C, then.

“You beat a record,” the voice on the other side informed her. Rose raised an eyebrow. “Usually girls call me within a day.”

Rose raised another eyebrow.

“Friday, I’ll pick you up?”

Rose would’ve raised the third eyebrow if she had one.

“I hadn’t called you to ask you out,” she clarified coldly, trying to sound as detached and uninterested as possible. “I need a favour,” she continued. She hastily set to specifying what the situation actually was before Francis could get it wrong. Abigail’s happy hour was set for Saturday evening -- therefore she needed for her hair to be done that day. Friday, maybe, to cut it short.

“Would Saturday afternoon be possible?”

“Around five, then?”

“I’ll renounce to my tea.”

Francis gave her his address, which Rose scribbled on a random piece of paper in her signature sloping script. “This isn’t a date,” she repeated, still suspicious that the other still believed otherwise. There was no answer.

***

Francis lived in a neighbourhood very similar to Rose’s. Even the flat was not very different from hers, discounting their different tastes in decor and his freshly painted walls. Although considering this, perhaps their houses weren’t too similar after all.

He greeted her with a smear of jelly on his cheek and a kitchen apron still tied around his hips. There was the familiar and strong smell of butter in the air.

“Biscuits?” Rose wondered aloud while she made herself comfortable in the living room. The tantalising smell of her favourite food made her mouth water. She inwardly scolded herself; no matter how delicious they were, they were not for her. Left on the couch was a copy of Madame Bovary, with a bookmark around page 20. Still the state of the book revealed that the book had definitely been read many times. She was about to sink in the first chapter of the novel she had always heard about, but never read, when Francis invited her to follow him in the kitchen. He didn’t give her any further explanations.

“I thought you may like it,” he informed her, before revealing the reason behind so much mystery. Rose would’ve gasped in surprised if such a gesture had fit well-born ladies. Francis had set the small round table in a way perfect for an afternoon snack; atop it lay a still-smoking teapot, a creamer full of fresh milk, sugar cubes piled on a sauce, and some pastries.

“I thought to have said this isn’t a date,” she muttered, although she still accepted the offered seat.

“Indeed, I am merely trying to be kind.”

Rose shrugged and grabbed a biscuit between thumb and index finger, blowing on the hot crust before tasting a bite. Ok, Frenchmen could do two things well: braids and biscuits. If he had been able to read the mind, Francis would’ve added a series of elements to Rose’s puny list; not having such a power he just smiled.

“How much sugar?”

“One cube.”

She took a sip, used to the boiling hot liquid trickling down her throat to warm her stomach. She always took a sip like this, simple, sweetened only by a little sugar, before adding milk. She stirred the beverage. It was a surprise to see her ribbons lying on the counter, next to the bowl of strawberry jam. She didn’t even notice that Francis had moved behind her and let her hair down.

“Why did you want me to do your hair?”

She told him about Abigail, going deeper in the subject than she had done on the phone. Francis at first didn’t comment, limiting to taking brush and pins from the bathroom. Only when he had already started to braid he expressed his opinion.

“A friend should accept you as you are.”

“A friend should also try to make you happy, don't you think?” replied Rose, thinking about the American.

“Touché.”

 _  
_ They didn’t broach the subject for the rest of the afternoon. They hardly talked. Rose was naturally a silent person, who preferred to express herself through letters and gestures; in addition she had the vague, albeit persistent, feeling that Francis was courting her. She recognized some of his gestures from the books she had read and this embarrassed her a lot. She welcomed the relief that came when an elastic band closed the extremity of the braid.

 


	2. Roses, kisses, and invitations to dinner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rose and Francis keep bouncing into each other, more or less by chance. At least Rose doesn't buy it is by chance.   
> From Abigail party - a disaster - to a snack with poisonous muffins at Francis' home to supermarket aisles.   
> And maybe an invitation to dinner will pop out.   
> Rose may even start to melt.

Roses, kisses, and invitations to dinner

 

Rose was sobbing quietly. Behind her the party music distracted people from the scene just happened, with her and Abigail as protagonists. Looking down, she noticed the plastic glass half-full of coke still in her hand – because well-born ladies didn’t drink alcohol. She threw it in the nearest bin.

“Something wrong?” a familiar voice asked. Rose muttered a greeting.

“Handkerchief?” Francis offered her a clean one. Rose thanked, wiped her eyes and blew her nose. She thought that Elizabeth Bennet would’ve never found herself in a similar situation, crying outside a cool nightclub because her friend couldn’t connect her brain before speaking. “What are you doing here?”

“Just passing by.”

“I’m not so stupid to buy that.”

“What has happened? Where’s your braid?”

Rose sobbed one last time. She very theatrically sighted, trying to keep up appearances, and then she answered. She said to have arrived to the party with groomed hair, braided, with a nice dress, even with high-heeled shoes. Abigail not only let her enter, but she even complimented her.   
“She said I didn’t look like me and so I thought about what you’ve said.”

Because if Abigail threatened to keep her out only for fashion sake, maybe she wasn’t the friend she professed to be. Only that friendship was complicate.

“But, anyway, she told me she wouldn’t let me enter with pigtails. Not that she wouldn’t let me stay” Rose continued, pausing the story for some late sobs. She cleaned her foggy glasses with the edge of the dress.

Rose had seen herself reflected in the lucid surface of one of the steel tables in the club and it had been like looking at a stranger. Rose Kirkland didn’t go to nightclubs on Saturday nights, with high-heeled shoes and mini-dress. On Saturday nights she, Rose, watched the DVD of Pride and Prejudice, under a patchwork duvet, pretending to caress a cat she didn’t have yet.

“I went to the toilet …”  
“And you returned to your usual pigtails” Francis concluded for her. Rose nodded, in one of the rare moments when she let her defences drop. After all, the Frenchman could seem the “copy of one of Ikeda’s characters”, he could have dared to propose her to cut her hair, but he had been kind. All that Abigail hadn’t been.

“She told me I wasn’t a real friend, that I would’ve embarrassed her and so on.”

Rose hadn’t stayed to listen further. She was sure the day after Abigail would’ve called her, in a profusion of apologies; she would’ve ever appeared at her door with something to be forgiven and Rose would’ve forgiven her, as always. For now, however, Rose could only thinking that her friend was having the time of her life in the warm and cosy club, not caring about her. A little voice reminded her that no one of the heroines she idolized so much would’ve ever commiserated herself. She shooed the thought, too sad to live up a Jane Austen’s character. Or a Bronte sisters’ character.

“I think your friend need a pair of glasses,” Francis declared after a long pause of reflection. Rose smiled a little for the irony. Unlike her, who depended on glasses since second grade, Abigal had the eyes of an eagle.

“Abigail could spot a McDonald sign from kilometres!”

“She doesn’t see the important things.”

“Like?”  
“For example how beautiful you are. Jolie. Mignonne.”

Rose had no idea what the last word meant. It was a compliment, probably. She felt a little flushing reddening her cheeks still wet with tears, and then the man’s fingers on her jawline. He would’ve kissed her, as they were in one of those romantic movies from which he seemed to have pop out, if she, waking up, hadn’t pushed him away. A well-born lady didn’t let a stranger to kiss her.

Only that he wasn’t really a stranger. He called her “jolie” and prepared her tea.

 

***

 

Outside Francis’ flat, with a box held to her chest, Rose was overthinking the apologies she had practiced. Abigail, as previewed, had apologised and it was a good thing Rose did the same with the Frenchman. After all, her behaviour wasn’t very polite. It was truly childish. Given the man’s face when he opened the door, Rose couldn’t say if he was more surprised or amused.

“Another party?” he speculated, stepping aside to let her in. “And that is?” he added, pointing at the packet in the girl’s arms. A vague smell of blueberries was coming from it.

“Muffin, to apologise” Rose explained. She consigned the gift, waited for a word of gratitude, and finally turned around, with pigtails whipping the air.

“Wait!”

Rose stopped, already on the landing, and turned, looking at him with a wondering face. She had done what she had to do to be a good neighbour, ignoring the fact they weren’t neighbours at all. She had apologised for the rash behaviour of the past Saturday, showing her gratitude through handmade pastries. She had nothing else to do there. In the distance, almost answering to her doubts, the Big Ben sounded four and a half.

“It’s almost five” Francis made her notice. “You don’t want to miss your tea, don’t you? We could eat these together” he finished, lightly shaking the box with the muffins. Having weighted and approved the idea, Rose headed toward the kitchen, like the time before. Francis blocked her way.

“The living room will be perfect.”

Rose frowned for a similar behaviour – absolutely not polite for her tastes. She would’ve enquired the motivations behind it, if the answer hadn’t shown itself through the portion of kitchen framed by the door, visible as soon as Francis stepped aside. There was a table already set for two.

“Oh.”

A simple word, still it could contain more meanings than a whole oration. She wasn’t disappointed, she had no reason to be; after all nothing connecter to the man and he owed her nothing. Despite all this, a nut of disappointment born inside her chest, putting down roots, sprouting seeds of jealousy.  Rose stood still halfway between the doorway and the couch. Too bad she’d already consigned her muffins: she was beginning to regret having given them to someone who clearly didn’t need them.

“What’s the matter?”  


Francis lightly touched her shoulder. He seemed to understand the reason behind her discomfort.

“Oh, that” he said with nonchalance, indicating the table. “My dear old mother came to visit. She sleeps in hotel, but I would never let her eat English food” he explained.

Rose breathed through her nose, taking the offense without doing excessive faces, because a well-born lady never lost it. A well-born lady always kept a perfect composure whichever the situation, limiting to few, polite outbursts in the darkness and silence of her bedroom. That only if she was sure there were no ears to catch her weaknesses. She sat on the edge of the couch.

“Then you shouldn’t eat those!” she yelled to a Francis who had disappeared in the kitchen to prepare tea.

“You shouldn’t eat the muffins, they’re English, I cooked them myself!” she specified, while the very same Madame Bovary from her previous visit found its way in her hands and on her knees. Rose was a voracious reader and when the Frenchman appeared again, holding a trailer on which two cups and a teapot had been placed, she was already dealing with chapter two.

The smell of the tea, however, acted on her like the Pid Piper of Hamelin’s music did on mice. Or were them children?

“Another reason to try them, then.”

It was so annoying not being able to understand if he was sincere, if he was courting, or both. Maybe there was no difference for him. When he took a small bite from the pastry, Rose told herself that the trepidation felt while she was waiting a response was due to nothing else but the simple desire to see her efforts recognized. Francis’ face twisted in a not reassuring way. Rose almost thought he was suffocating or that something had paralyzed him, but the man drank a sip of tea and swallowed the bite. He was becoming green.

“If you want to poison someone, arsenic and cyanide are quicker and less painful methods.”

Before Rose could protest, he grabbed the left muffins, announcing that they belonged only in the trash bin. “Don’t make such a scene. I tasted them, they were good!”

“They were pure poison. This is a dessert.”

She put a dessert under her nose, something that totally looked like a complicate strawberry soufflé. He cut a slice and explained he had cooked it for the dinner with his mother “But maman should be fine with the usual tarte tatin that I should be able to cook before she arrives. She loves it.”

Rose could only stutter the nth thanks for his kindness. She stuffed her mouth with the dessert – still trying not to pig out, because it wasn’t proper for a well-born lady – so to have an excuse for not talking. She wondered if it was appropriate to eat a whole soufflé by herself.

“Vivian told me you love to be always informed about the royal family.”

Vivian was the owner of the hairdressing salon where Rose was a customer and Francis worked.

“Yes. I would like to live in such a world.”

“And it isn’t like that?”  
His surprise seemed sincere. Despite that Rose was on the verge of replying that it was obvious. If she had been not noble, but at least from a well-born family, she surely wouldn’t have gone to a cheap salon. Maybe Francis thought she was doing so because she was a cold-hearted stingy person.

She sighted, hands grabbing the fabric of her skirt.

“All right. My mum is a tailor; my dad was a mineworker until he became paralysed after an accident. I have three part time jobs to gain enough to live and repay my college debt. I had a sister, but we were so poor we had to give her in adoption.”

A pause. “And you?”

“Maman was a painter – she never sold a picture. Papa was a barber. He taught me to cut hair. I work as an hairdresser to pay the art supplies, waiting for some galleries to accept my works.”

“I don’t see paintings here” Rose objected, looking around.

“A month ago the house was so full you couldn’t move. Some friends of mine were kind enough to take some canvas. The others were given to the charity.”

Francis preferred to overlook the fact he had actually begged such friends to convince them to take in some canvas and that they had begged him to stop painting as an answer.

“You’re talented, but you see, your painting don’t sell” Gilbert, who was outspoken, had told him.

“You aren’t like a character from a shojou manga!” Rose waked him up. Francis turned his head toward the girl, whose cheeks were still flushed with embarrassment.

“What?”

Rose coloured with a pinker shade. She hadn’t noticed to talk out loud. She diverted her gaze, twisting one of her pigtails around her wrist. She would’ve stood up if Francis hadn’t grabbed the other wrist. She rummaged her memory, looking for a similar scene from one of her beloved novels. Surely something like that would’ve happened to Elizabeth, Catherine, Emma or Jane. She just couldn’t come up with anything.

That time, when Francis leaned to kiss her, the girl didn’t move away. Not immediately.

In the following scene she was standing, hands on her hips, embarrassment painted on her face. She was confused. She was offended. She didn’t truly know.

The kiss hadn’t been bad. Actually it was good. Rose decided to add a third element to her list of “What Frenchmen could do well”.

French braids, biscuits and kissing.

“It is called French kiss for a reason” the usual little voice reminded her. Rose looked at Francis, convinced he had said such a thing. Too late she was aware of her mistake. The sure, condescending smile – the genre of smiles that either you melt like a slush on a volcano or you slap the person – distended in articulating an invitation.

“Dinner. You and I. Next Saturday?”

“Where?” Rose agreed, still half stunned. If there was a single word for describing Francis, that was charm and it was short-circuiting her. Francis chuckled like she’d just said a very funny joke.

“My house, evidemment. There is no restaurant in London which can beat my cooking.”

Rose tighten her lips, wrinkling her nose. He was even arrogant.

But he was also chivalrous. And he could do the best braid in the world.

And he could cook delicious biscuits.

And he kissed divinely.

 

***

Rose hadn’t lied about doing three jobs, despite what one might think considering her participation in courses for painting, ceramics or other hobbies. They were almost totally free, organised by old ladies whose average age was higher than fifty – Sakura was twenty but acted like she was thirty years older and Abigail was strange, given the fact she went around carrying a baseball bat – and stuck in the empty spaces of her work timetable with a mastery that would’ve transformed the Tetris world champion in an amateur by comparison.

On Monday, at nine thirty, Rose started her shift as a cashier in a local minimarket and for the following six hours the only thing she was interested in was finding the bar code in every single product that passed on the conveyor belt. Some colleagues loved chatting between customers, not caring for the queue of mums with screaming children, grannies who smelled like cats’ treats, teenagers in sweatpants.

Rose, however, hardly diverted her attention from the counter, limiting to the minimum the contact with other human beings. She could camouflage with the background and nobody would’ve noticed the difference. She acted like a robot, with no attention for her surroundings.   Her head was elsewhere, in Bennet sister’s country house or in the castle where Catherine fell for Heatcliff’s charm.

Beep. Celery. Been. Tomato sauce. Beep. Apples. Beep. Napkins. Been. Other stuff she didn’t care about.

“Twenty-five pounds. Do you want a bag?”

“You should greet friends, you know.”  
“Francis?”

Rose had never been the genre of person who stops working to chat amiably about this and that, especially in front of her grim boss, but lately she was doing a lot of things outside the box. Her very small box.

She decided the fat lady with the basket full of hyper caloric food could wait a little longer.

“What are you doing here?” she asked, hoping that the supermarket light hid her blushing. Usually the neon made her look older and decorated her face with a pair of eye-bags and even some wrinkles.

“I buy groceries, evidemment.”

“Here?”

“It’s cheap and near” he answered, with elbows posed on the edge of the conveyor belt. He had a point. How he could appear always so relaxed it was one of the mystery of life. Just after “where do we come from?” and “Does God exist”. Rose gave a fake, nervous, not-at-all convincing smile to the obese woman, who was starting to look impatient. Probably she was afraid to lose the new episode of a trashy soap opera.

“I’ve never seen you here before” she objected. Francis finished to bag what he had bought. “I usually go to counter three” – he indicated the cashier with backcombed hair who was chewing a gum like her life depended on it – “You would never say, but she’s an encyclopaedia on French avantgardes in the early XX century” Francis said, before the Englishwoman could object again.

“And you are usually so focused on that counter I doubt you would’ve notice me before we knew each other.”

He was right, again. Queen Elizabeth in person could’ve walked among the shelves full of jams and pickles and Rose would’ve given her only a distracted look. Almost. Maybe, if she had been lucky enough to meet queen Elizabeth without the usual parade of bodyguards, she would’ve profited for dumping on her the multitude of embroidered bibs for Charlotte and George, which encumbered the wardrobe. The bibs, not George and Charlotte.

“I see you again, then.”

“Well, there’s our dinner. You haven’t forgotten, have you?”

“Of course not.”

“Parfait.”

Rose would’ve avoided the kiss, which took her by surprise. Almost. She told herself she was feeling warm in her lower belly due to broken air conditioning.

 

“Rose has fallen in love” Abigail would’ve said a few days later, for a public of wannabe painters with arthritis and still better than her, stuck forever at the level of stick figures. Only Abigail could draw a horse that looked like a mass of sausages. The girl’s passion for hot-dogs wasn’t a mystery, but such levels were ridiculous.

The English girl ignored her, leaned on the canvas to adjust a couple of violet (primo piano). Twenty brushes stopped mid-ait, twenty heads turned in her direction, like an enormous light beam had dropped from above to light her. She moved the easel for using the canvas as a shield against the crowd of little old women, hungry for juicy news to cheer up their embroidery.

“It isn’t true,” she protested. Only her eyes emerged from the top edge of the canvas.

“Rose has fallen in love, Rose has fallen in love,” the American girl chanted. “Rose has butterflies in her stomach and heart-eyes.”

The genre of questions that always follow such kind of news came soon after, in a choir of squawking voices, aimed at completing all the five W of journalism. In the background, Abigail was singing the wedding march.

Who?

Nothing that affected them.

What?

Nothing to be talked about.

Where?

In a place they shouldn’t know.

Why?

For reasons she hadn’t to explain.

When?

In a time she would’ve not reveal to them.

Rose packed her drawing material without speaking and went away, leaving behind the happy chatting of the old painters, mixed with numerous Abigail’s protests.

 

***

As predicted by Francis, they met again in the very same supermarket. That afternoon, however, Rose wasn’t standing behind a counter. Sometimes people forgot that also employees bought groceries and stuff and such astonishment was shown through long, wondering gazes for her presence in the queue, with a red basket stuck between feet. She was still wearing the green employees’ uniform.

A couple counters over there Francis – standing at counter 3, where Katie would’ve forever chewed gum like Violet in The chocolate factory – greeted her with a nod. Rose tried to guess what the menu of the impending dinner would’ve been from the shopping rolling down from the conveyor belt in the brown paper bags. She saw celery, salad, some tomatoes, a piece of one of those cheese with unpronounceable names, the thin packet of ham slices in vacuum parading and she would’ve have continued her list if her turn hadn’t arrived. She stirred enough for mechanically paying her shopping and check the change, although the cashier was a colleague and would’ve never cheated her, no matter how snob Rose may looked like.

“We are all in this together, miss Kirkland,” her colleague used to repeat. She surely was saying something while passing her the last can of soup, with a Northern accent and the habit of saying “aye” instead of “yes”. Rose hardly heard her words, having a different type of indecision, whether to disappear before Francis could approach or to let Destiny be. Too bad she didn't consider that her pigtails made her stand out in the crowd like the ugly duck among all little brothers and sisters that came out right.

“You’re lovely.”

“Are you all born with a blandishment dictionary incorporated?”

“And one for etiquette. Do you need any help?”  
Rose refused, as usual. She pretended stoicism at the perspective of facing a five-stops trip on the Tube, where given the time she couldn’t find a sit even if she was a wounded veteran, followed by a short walk and seven flights because the elevator had been broken since the previous summer.

“No, my home is near,” she answered, while evaluating with a critic eye the best way to carry the three shopping bags: held to her chest or by hand?

“I came by car.”  
It took all of Rose’s self-control to make her answer sound more like a polite “If you insist” then a pathetic “You’re my saviour”.

Only that in that moment she really saw the Frenchman and his car as salvation on earth.

It was just an old, sad and battered Renault, of an undefined colour, whose backseats were stained with paint. The cabin, where Francis stuck the shopping bags somehow, was almost totally occupied by an half frame, put in a crooked way. A corner of it pushed dangerously against an already cracked window. An old can of plum-coloured paint, whose lid was lost somewhere else, cried coloured tears at every bump and curve. An album was posed on the passenger seat, while the cup holder hosted a glass full of brushes in various sizes. Pencil shaving and rubber pieces dirtied the small rag under the passenger seat. The radio was stuck on BBC1, if you could consider radio a series on unrelated sentences, spaced out by a half-continuous, annoying and almost eerie crackling.

Francis drove to Rose’s house with sureness, _excessive_ sureness. The few directions he asked were just for appearance sake. The girl adjusted her glasses on the nose.

“Are you aware you could seem a stalker?”

“Now that’s an exaggeration.”

As predicted, the elevator was still broken, as indicated by a sign scribbled in indelible marker. In the last months other hands had added comments and trashy doodles. It was a protest for a negligence that had lasted for too long and would’ve ended only at the first concussion victim when a piece of plaster would’ve detached from the mouldy ceiling.

Rose insisted that the Frenchman preceded her on the stairs, just to be sure his hand kept away from place where they mustn’t venture. Stolen kisses were already enough.

“I’m sure there is a place in hell for those who breaks elevators,” Francis panted.

A couple of floors below, there was a pledder selling flowers, one of the many that lately seemed to have popped out like mushrooms in the neighbourhood streets. Sometimes they went in the building, which hadn’t a caretaker, strolling up and down on the stair, ignored by the few people passing by. Finally they returned in the street, with their sad flower bouquets.

Surely Rose wouldn’t have expected – maybe she just was too ostinato in not expecting such gestures – that the Frenchman bought from such seller the biggest roses bouquet available.

Francis offered it to her with a chivalrous gesture, a little dramatic, with a bow and arms flapping around. He just needed a cape and the picture would’ve been complete.

Rose, with shopping bags still sparse at her feet – a bag was about to fall on the side – wished to sink down, down to the earth core.

“They’re very beautiful,” she dared a simple aesthetic consideration.

“Not as much as you.”

Rose didn’t react to a similar, impudent adulation; neither she seemed inclined to accept the flowers. She considered roses to be exaggerated, good only in a fiction, but banal in reality.

“They don’t have thorns,” Francis assured, before dragging her in a lingering kiss, a trick for shifting positions. So now she was the one on the landing side.

“Don’t enter in other people’s home without permission,” she cried, red, bending down to recovers her shopping.

The water pounding covered her protests. If you lived in a two-rooms flat, excluding the bathroom, there wasn’t even the excuse of having to inform the guest about the rooms’ disposition. In the house the only sink that didn’t spit a yellowish drool was in the kitchen, so there were no doubts on where the Frenchman had disappeared.

“Et voilà!”

Francis was radiant. He had filled with water the only, _only,_ saucepan, which didn’t have Lilliputians dimensions and disposed the roses in it, not before having cut the stems almost up to the corolla; but beggars can’t be choosers.

“I pick you up tomorrow at seven” he told her, as it was the most normal thing in the world.

Rose watched the pot and the flowers in it, bending outwards due to gravity. They seemed to nod to her silent reflections. Their transient was shown through petals already on the verge of detaching from the corolla.

Roses. Roses for Rose.

The Western symbol of love, but also England national flower, Tudor red and Lancaster white. Her parents called her Rose because she was born, almost by chance, on 23rd April, when St George was celebrated. St George was England saint patron. Rose.

 

Rose, Rose, Rose red,

will I ever see thee wed?

 

 

She decided that for that evening she would’ve been fine with soup warmed in the teapot.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> N’est-ce pas= isn't it?  
> Evidemment= obviously  
> Parfait= perfect  
> Mignonne= nice, pretty  
> Song from "Rose red" by Emily Autumn.

**Author's Note:**

> This is a translation and I'm not english native speaker, so any suggestion is more than welcomed.  
> The updated will be slow. There will be a sex scene for the sake of the Explicit rating, I promise, in the third chapter.
> 
> Edit: first chapter betated by the lovely midnight_reverie


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